-----Original Message-----
From: Marta Russell <ap888 at lafn.org>
> One reason there isn't a demand for social spending is because the 1997
>Balanced Budget Agreement makes it impossible to get any funding for social
>programs even when they are agreed necessary.
The reason why there is no demand for social spending is (close your ideas you third party absolutists, it's about to get ugly) that a majority of the Congress in both Houses are Republicans (with an extra margin of about 20 Blue Dog Democrats in the House and 3-5 anti-spending Dems in the Senate). Forget accounting trips; the BBA was what the GOP settled for when there much more radical government cutting plans of 1995 and 1996 got vetoed.
The 1993 Budget Act did increase social spending quite significantly in the following years. It was the GOP takeover of Congress that nipped those increases. Use bashing Clinton as a cover for dealing with that reality, but put Paul Wellstone in the President's seat, and the fact remains that he cannot force the Congress to increase spending. He can shut down the government (as Clinton did) but that is a purely negative doomsday power that is hard to use in the micromanagement of spending bills.
As for Max's comments about regressive taxes paying off the debt to rich bondholders, it is the same regressive taxes paying interest on those bonds as well. The difference is that if the bonds are paid off, the rich bondholders over time collect far less from those regressive taxes. Obviously, the best solution is more progressive taxes, but in the abscense of that, paying off debt will help open up revenue in the future for other uses.
Let's be clear-- we spend more each year on interest payments to those rich bondholders than we spend on aid to the poor in all its forms. If that distribution of tax dollars is Keynesianism (which I don't believe BTW) then it is a terrible rightwing policy.
--Nathan newman